Pat,
DAML+OIL, and I hope OWL, can be viewed a fragment of FOL, with atomic
classes and properties corresponding to unary and binary predicates
respectively. According to this correspondence, subClassOf axioms
become implications, e.g., A subClassOf B corresponds to:
forall x . A(x) -> B(x)
Similarly, a property range axiom P range A corresponds to:
forall x,y P(x,y) -> A(y).
What could be simpler and clearer than that?
The combination of these two sentences entails
forall x,y P(x,y) -> B(y).
What could be simpler and clearer than that?
If you want some alternative semantics, could you please explain in
similar terms what it is?
Ian
p.s. In DAML+OIL, and I hope in OWL, it has long been recognised (I'm
sure it is written down in the documentation somewhere) that range is
just syntactic sugar, and that P range A could be re-written as:
Thing subClassOf Restriction (onProperty P) (allValuesFrom A)
with the same result as above, i.e., this axiom plus A subClassOf B
clearly entails:
Thing subClassOf Restriction (onProperty P) (allValuesFrom B)